Social Media Metrics that Matter
There is a vast amount of information and data available when looking at social media metrics. Just because there's somuch data readily available, doesn't mean that you need it all. Picking out what social media metrics to analyze should align with your business goals. If you're new to social media analytics, this blog will answer common questions and provide you with tools to get you started on the right path.
In this blog we're going pair social media metrics with these common questions:
Who is my audience?
Am I doing better than my competitors?
What are people saying about my brand?
When is the best time to publish?
Which content does my audience enjoy the most?
Which social media network is the best for my brand?
How can I have a better performance on social media?
Who is My Audience?
This is super important! Knowing who follows your brand will provide insight into content that will resonate more with your audience. This broad question breaks down into several smaller questions like: what is the age group of my audience, what is the geographical location of my audience, what are the gender(s) of my audience, etc.
To answer this question on Facebook and Instagram, you can use the Facebook Business Suite Insights Tool. Below is a snapshot of data from one of my clients:
You can see from the data of this client information on its audience on Facebook and Instagram. On Facebook, the majority of the audience is men and women between the ages of 25 and 34, though it is followed closely by two other age groups. The top country is United States and biggest audience is in New York, NY. On Instagram, the majority of audience members for this client is women between the ages of 45 and 54, and for men between the ages of 25 and 34. The demographic is similar to Facebook.
Am I Doing Better Than My Competitors?
Your question doesn't have to be exactly this, but it's more about the comparison. You could be wondering how you're doing compared to your competitors. Better? Worse? On-par? For this question, I would recommend using Fanpage Karma.
These are two consulting companies that have been compared on Fanpage Karma. On this website, you can compare any brand by searching their social media accounts, no login needed. You can select the exact metrics you want to look at too. If you're interested in comparing engagement rate, audience size, impressions, etc. You can find it all here.
What are People Saying About My Brand?
Do you want to know the social sentiment of your audience, or Share of Voice? Do they like your latest product release? Is your customer service lacking? To measure sentiment, you need to think about keywords that your audience may be using on social media.
Sprout Social is a tool for social media listening. You can choose keywords and platforms to track and analyze social media conversations around relevant topics to understand audience sentiment. Measuring social sentiment helps you understand what’s most often associated with your brand and where you can improve.
When is the Best Time to Publish?
Finding out when the best time to post your content is important because you want the largest amount of people possible to see your content. This question goes back to the demographic of your audience. If they are in a similar timezone, they may all be online at the same time. But how do you find this out?
Followerwonk is one of many tools that can measure social media activity and time. Followerwonk is specific to Twitter, though you can use Facebook Page Insights for Facebook. You can see from the graph, that HubSpot's Twitter followers are most active around 10:00 am - 2:00 pm EST. HubSpot's Twitter is most active between 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm. Coincidence? I think not!
Which Content Does My Audience Enjoy Most?
Engagement metrics will answer this question! If your audience is interacting with your content, they probably like it. This comes in the form of likes, comments, retweets, shares, etc.
For this example I used Facebook Page Insights to look at what kind of content receives the most engagement from my audience. On my client's page, the most popular content is photos, followed by video, and linked content. This is helpful because if we didn't post as many photos as we do, I would consider posting more content with photos. You can also view post interactions on Instagram, but their insights feature isn't the best.
Which Social Media Network is the Best for My Brand?
Again, I think this is anther demographic audience question. Different demographics use different channels. The last book I read, Social Media Strategy: Marketing, Advertising, and Public Relations in the Consumer Evolution by Keith Quesenberry, gave me a ton of insight on social media audiences.
Here's what I learned (just going over a few channels):
Facebook: The biggest demographic here are males between 25 - 34 years old with 57% of users. In the U.S., the largest audience are females from 25 - 34 years old. The U.S. only makes up about 10% of its users while Europe makes up about 40%.
Twitter: 52% men and 47% women use this platform. Twitter users falls between two age groups, 25 - 34 and 54 - 64.
LinkedIn: The U.S. makes up the largest audience with 59%. The largest demographic on this channel is male (55%) from the ages of 30 - 49 years old.
In Quesenberry's book, Chapter 7: Social Networks, Blogs, and Forums, goes over the process of selecting social media channels to use. You need to ask yourself three questions:
Is our target audience active on this platform?
How do we communicate the big idea on this platform?
What do we want them to do on this platform?
Analyze your audience on each channel and decide if the platform is right for you.
How Can I Have Better Performance on Social Media?
This is a culminating question. If you start to analyze your audience, engagement, conversions, share of voice, etc. and change or update your strategies to align with these metrics, your performance will absolutely rise. To maximize your performance, I will provide a list of metrics to track and provide some tools that can help you accomplish your goals.
Metrics That Matter:
Engagement
Audience & Followers
Brand Awareness
Sentiment & Share of Voice
Reach & Impressions
Frequency
Time/Day
Conversions
Social Media Tools:
I hope this blog helps you boost your social channels and clears up some of the murkiness that comes from data and analytics! I wanted to lastly mention that this blog was not sponsored by any of these brands!